


(If love is the answer) you're home

by yarost



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Trailer, Discussion of Abortion, Fix-It of Sorts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pregnancy, Sam and Bucky being a side ship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 18:34:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13196112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yarost/pseuds/yarost
Summary: Vomiting starts three weeks after Siberia.written for the 2017 stevetony secret santa





	(If love is the answer) you're home

The first of signs is ignored, filled away behind trauma. Tony Stark – genius, playboy, billionaire, philanthropist, _traumatised_. The adjective clinging to him, just as fitting as the others. Broken Tin Man, with a heart made of glass. Should have kept just the brains and some of the courage; home now was impossible. His own Kansas washed away, scattered, like the letters of his name when the tower was first attacked. A lifetime ago, when they almost became a family.

 

But the first sign is actually the second – he has been feeling more tired than usual, but who wouldn’t after all that had happened? Sometimes he sleeps whole days away, which Rhodey and Pepper see as a good thing. _Perhaps you’re compensating for all the years when you slept three, four hours for every forty-eight._ He’d wake up, still feeling as dreams feel, still cold, still on the ground. A flash of silver and red and blue as the shield came down.

 

 _(I think I was flirting with you even when we were fighting_ Steve said, smiling and blinking as he always did – one eye and then the other, lazy like an old mutt. They were in bed. Tony was teaching him not to blush. They were versed now in each other’s bodies, whole alphabets learned, classes at nighttime that extended till morning. It wasn’t peace but a reprieve, or its rehearsal. Back when they both believed in better days.)

 

Vomiting starts three weeks after Siberia.

 

When the morning can barely be called so, he presses his head to the marble of the bathroom floor, his face ashen, his legs trembling still. He doesn’t know why he is sick, pregnancy is the last thing in his mind. He has no appetite these days, his body is consuming itself. As if longing could kill, as if there is still enough left of his heart to be broken by Steve’s absence.

 

He gets up, washes his face, brushes his teeth. Even as the morning sickness continues throughout the next days, he doesn’t say anything to Rhodey or Pepper. What is a little vomiting compared to the shattering of a spine? Tony takes an aspirin. Tells himself, in a voice and phrase like Howard’s, to toughen up.

 

 

 

 

 

Rhodey’s been making progress.

 

A tress of hope to be salvaged from the ruins. That and Peter Parker. James and the kid swinging webs in Queens keep Tony going. It would be so easy to slip without them, to excel in disintegration, to wane from bed to bed, to let the drink and the anxiety do the rest. But Tony behaves, tries his best not to self destruct. He exercises, does yoga and eats his vegetables, forces food down three times a day. Even if doesn’t want to be there for himself he must be there for Rhodes and for Peter.

 

“I’m worried about you, Stank.”

 

Rhodey says one day. It’s mid-morning and they’re having frozen yoghurt – an odd, sudden craving – after a run on the treadmill. Steadily James has been pushing up the numbers, a few meters more every day. Tony is precariously optimistic. There’s a dozen prototypes in his lab – new legs for Rhodes in case he needs them. He’d built him a whole new skeleton if he asked.

 

Tony licks his spoon.

 

“Stank? Seriously? Are we still doing this— Rhodey. Honey bear. If it’s difficult for you to come up with a new joke I am more than happy to help you, for instance…”

 

Rhodey interrupts him:

 

“You’re pale, you lost weight—”

 

“…you could call me handsome, genius, love of your life, of course those are not jokes because they are all true, but…”

 

“Tony…”

 

“… _Stank_? That’s just beneath you—”

 

“Tony, your scent has changed.”

 

That hinders Tony’s babbling.

 

Rhodey is an Alpha.

 

The thought comes, unrequited: _did he smell Steve on me, all those weeks ago?_

The topic isn’t one of his favourites – his secondary gender was another one in the very long list of Howard’s reasons to be disappointed: he wanted an Alpha for a son, an heir in its most archaic, sexist meaning.

 

Tony shrugs:

 

“Must be menopause. I know I don’t look it but I’m on the wrong side of forties.”

 

Rhodes shakes his head. He hesitates – a rare thing. They are made of sharp, painful honesty. The subject that hampers him, that mellows him into gentler words and heedful silences can only be Steve. His eyes are dark and his expression is careful when he looks at Tony again, and Tony knows _he_ knows he slept with Captain America. He had the suspicion for some time because Rhodey is smart and knows Tony too well. And now he guesses what Rhodey is going to say before he opens his mouth, he knows the math leading to this. And it’s ludicrous. Absurd. Nothing grows in him but regret. His is salted soil, barren and foiled.

 

“Tony, you smell pregnant.”

 

Rhodey says. Tony misses a beat before smiling and arching an eyebrow, so his words don’t come out as nonchalant as he would like.

 

“Come on Rhodey, you can’t know that.”

 

“Been there before,” James answers, “Remember?”

 

Oh. That. Tony looks away.

 

“That was what? Twenty years ago?”

 

“Twenty-five.” The Alpha corrects, “but you smell the same.”

 

There’s an abortion is his curriculum. Tony doesn’t remember the Alpha who warranted it. He was drunk most likely. He was drunk a lot back then, after his parents died.

 

Rhodey is the only one who knows.

 

“I’ll take a pregnancy test if it helps you sleep at night.” Tony concedes, the nonchalant tone to his voice more convincing this time around. He touches Rhodey’s arm and looks at him. “But let me do the worrying, ok? Let me take care of you for a change.”

 

 

 

 

 

They didn’t name it. Let it flourish wide, unspoken, that thing between them that started after the Chitauri. _Oh, this is bad_ , Tony thought too late, already in too deep. Steve was sleeping beside him, looking young and unharmed. Beneath his arc reactor Tony felt something tighten. Lying to himself was getting harder these days.

 

“You look worried.” Came the voice of the Alpha. He was looking at Tony, eyes still heavy with sleep.

 

“Thought you were sleeping.” Tony said. He hesitated, but touched Steve like a gentle lover. A finger brushing back some of his blond hair, then grazing softly on his cheek. Such a simple thing – and yet he felt in danger.

 

“This bed is too soft.” Steve said. “What’s your excuse?”

 

Tony dodged the question and asked instead:

 

“That’s why you like fucking me on the floor?”

 

Steve blushed, but smiled. He held Tony’s hand and kissed it – so tenderly. He was safe, in the gap between sleep and consciousness. He wouldn’t remember it in the morning, and if he did it would taste like a dream. But Tony was wide awake, feeling everything with clarity and knowing—

 

“It’s your mind. It doesn’t stop, does it?”

 

Tony swallowed. He wasn’t expecting that level of insight from the Cap. People saw him in simpler terms (annoying playboy, egocentric, a good lay) and he assumed Steve would too.

 

“No.” Tony agreed. “It’s a curse and a blessing I guess. Allowed me to make this.” He touches the arc reactor in his chest.

 

“But doesn’t let you sleep.” Steve said. “Let me help you.”

 

And before Tony could tease or protest, Steve was kissing him, pinning him down to the bed with the sort of impetuousness Tony had taught him. When they started Steve would look at him, sometimes voice his need for a explicit permission to kiss the Omega.

 

Steve was solid, warm, large enough to surround Tony entirely with his body. Tony felt small and wanted, shielded, as if Steve was too vibranium.

 

He felt the hardness of the Alpha’s cock pressing on his belly and chuckled against the kiss, parting his lips from the Captain’s to bite lightly his earlobe and tease against his ear:

 

“Is this really for my benefit?”

 

Steve, blushed to his ears. There, the shy Brooklyn boy again. Tony’s smile widened.

 

“I—I can stop if you want— _Tony!_ ”

 

He gasped, when the Omega held his cock and stroked it languidly. Steve always melted prettily, seeming perpetually surprised at the extent of his pleasure, at what Tony could do to him. He wasn’t untouched when Tony took him to bed, not a virgin as many believed. But Tony collected a list of many of his firsts. His first blow job. His first rim job. His first attempt at dirty talking, at spanking, at the timid beginnings of bondage – Tony’s wrists tied carefully above his head. His first time popping his knot.

 

“Who said anything about stopping?” Tony said, his timbre the smoothest of silks, his bedroom voice, his shameless words. Steve moaned and fucked into his hand. “That’s it. Good boy. Did you wake up with a boner, sweetheart? Were you having a nice dream?”

 

Again the rising scarlet. Tony would never tire of this, of making Steve blush.

 

“It’s your smell.” The Captain confessed. “So good, Tony. It’s perfect. You’re beautiful. I feel like…”

 

The Omega’s dexterous fingers curled around the base of his knot. Steve groaned. Tony insisted:

 

“Like?”

 

The Captain kissed him again. Like this, so close, Tony could feel the warmth of his cheeks’ colour. The ichor beneath Steve’s skin. The smile against his lips.

 

“Like doing this all the time.”

 

“This?” Tony purred and kissed Steve, biting playfully his lower lip, not satisfied yet. “What is _this_?”

 

“Making lo—” Steve hesitated and Tony held his breath for a moment, his hand going still. “Fucking you.” Carried on the Captain.

 

The Omega smiled again, a trained smile. And later he tried to tell himself that what he felt was pure relief, not tainted at all with disappointment.

 

“Then hurry up and fuck me, Alpha.”

 

Tony said, spreading his legs for him.

 

 

 

The universe fucks him too.

 

A hand against his carefully trimmed goatee, another holding the plastic stick, the sentence written in two pink lines.

 

The first thing he thinks—

 

_It was there, germinating already when its Father punched me bloody to protect another Omega._

It must be a mistake, Tony rationalises, a false positive. Good thing he bought more than one test.

 

The two lines appear again, as if mockingly. He looks and looks, as if he can will the result away.

 

No. Not really. It’s elation he feels, not dread. A forbidden feeling, claiming the space between his ribs, so intense it hurts like sadness. He tries not to feel this, not to be immensely, painfully happy. He has reasons not to: this is will be fatherless child and Tony has no idea how to raise a kid. He knows not to make the same mistakes Howard did but beyond that he ain’t got the foggiest. He’s old and full of scars.

 

Still. _Still_. His hands go down to his belly. It’s flat for now but it feels warmer. This is the best thing to happen to him in months. Hell, this is the best thing in years. Does he deserve it? Probably not. But even self- loathing, which covers him wholly like a sheen of dust, hinders him not.

 

He starts to plan. Visits to the doctor, ways to evade the tabloids, the colour of a room, a list of names. Rhodey’s and Pepper’s reactions. He doesn’t notice his own smile.

 

Beneath it all, of course, there’s melancholy, so nicely appropriated by Tony that he wears it like a second skin.

 

 _I wish you knew your daddy,_ _kid_  Tony whispers to the unborn, _but I also hope I’ll never need to see him again._

 

Not peace, but its rehearsal. It shatters eventually.

 

A little less than a year later the sky rips open again like a sheet of old paper. A purple light. The nightmares he’s had for years come pouring down.

 

And now he’s not one, he’s two. Not so easy to die now that he has a son.

 

He takes that old cellphone, hits the only number it carries. _Come home_.

 

 

 

 

When Steve was fresh into the new century, ungainly, wide-eyed and dizzy, SHIELD introduced him to the Avengers one by one. Two weeks awake and still gathering his losses, the Captain watched the videos, read the archives: A russian spy, a scientist sharing a body with his own experiment, an exceptional archer and a man wearing a charming grin as easily, as flawlessly as he wore designer suits, a man said to be the smartest in the world, a man in a gold and crimson marvel, a _handsome_ man—

 

Arching his back, spreading his legs. A collection of hands mapping his body, whose hands were those? Tony Stark, a _loose_ Omega. A series of youtube videos and paparazzi photos: _Omega bachelor Tony Stark party hard. Exclusive: Stark’s newest fling. Tony Stark: Alpha Eater._

Howard’s boy.

 

Later Steve would admit to himself that boiled along with what he felt there was lust, a subtle spark, the first since he was brought out of the ice. And there was guilt too, that lust should take this form, that it could make him wonder, for a moment, what it would feel like to have too his hands on that Omega. He wasn’t used to the filth of these thoughts, to the rawness of it. To want someone he knew only by name. It would be easy to blame Tony himself for these fantasies, but also dishonest. Like a sinner blaming temptation.

 

When they first met in person Steve wondered if Tony could tell.  

 

Perhaps that helped season their first encounter with tension and mutual dislike. _I’ve seen the footage,_ Steve had said, _you only fight for yourself_. Back then he didn’t know Hydra was already a parasite within SHIELD. It was in their interest to show him Tony in such unflattering light: a selfish playboy, a harlot, a floozy. Steve was an Alpha of the forties. He was better than most but not completely immune to some of his time’s retrograde ideas.

 

They fought together then. As the ripped sky rained down the alien army over New York. And they moved so easily together, as if it wasn’t their first war. They would be like this in the bedroom too, Tony anticipating needs Steve never knew he had, Steve fucking Tony in a way no one had before. _You really mean business,_ the Omega would tease. Steve always fucked Tony with a lingering possessiveness, bedewing him with marks. As if he was going away in the morning and needed to leave something so Tony could remember him by. He never had the chance with Peggy, after all.

 

He was looking up as Tony went fast, unflinching, to his death. _I was so wrong_ , he thought, _and now he’ll never know—_

 

But Tony fell down before the portal closed. A red star. His was Steve’s first smile. The first real one, in that new age, full of joy and relief. When Tony asked if someone had kissed him Steve answered in silence: _no one, but I wish I had._

 

 

 

Wakanda is an Eden. When Steve first saw it he felt like Dorothy stepping into technicolour. But months go by and he begins to miss the sepia of his Kansas. As beautiful as Wakanda is, this is not his home.

 

His cellphone – the twin to the one he sent Tony – remains silent. He charges it daily, religiously. Waits besides it sometimes, trying to curb the blooming expectation, one foot tapping against the floor, his face propped by his hand. The stubble harsh in his cheek. Growing up skinny and sickly he didn’t even manage to grow a shallow moustache.

 

Tony would tease him about it. Steve would leave beard burns on his thighs.

 

He gets up, leaves the phone on the bedside table. Maybe he should see what Sam’s been up to.

 

 

 

 

T’Challa is a most gracious, generous host. He’s busy too, often leaving for days, juggling well the roles of Wakanda’s protector – the Black Panther – and its King. Steve sees him from time to time, when he’s not training with Sam under the Dora Milaje. The sparring leaves him sore and exhausted; he’s never seen anyone – not even Natasha – move as these girls do. He’s thankful for the dreamless nights, for the energy he spends in the training. But the Dora Milaje has duties too. Steve finds himself in empty days, where that thing that gnaws at him festers, feasting on guilt but also on longing.

 

Sam looks at him knowingly. They’ve been needing fewer and fewer words lately, understanding each other with glances, subtle touches on each other’s shoulders. Steve feels terrible about the trouble he caused the other Alpha, about having tangled him in his myriad of personal decisions – but the selfish part of him is grateful that Sam is here. It would feel terribly lonely without him.

 

“Do you regret anything?” Sam asks.

 

“No.” Steve answers. Too fast. He looks down for a moment. “A few things. I’m glad we saved Bucky but…”

 

“You wish you had done things differently.” Sam completes, a small smile on his lips. Steve nods. “Yeah, me too.”

 

He wishes, yes. To unmake some sins. Not to have raised his shield high, not to have looked – Tony’s expression was fearful. Those lips made bloody, hadn’t he kissed them? That bruised cheek, those impossibly long eyelashes. The body he loved for so many nights, where he laid on so much fury.

 

But what was he supposed to do? Let Tony kill Bucky?

 

“You’re thinking about him again.” Sam notes.

 

“I,” Steve begins, pauses. Will it become true, once he says it? Is he dooming himself? “I don’t think he’ll ever call.”

 

“He will.” Sam says, sounding sure and untroubled. He looks at Steve on the sly, an eyebrow slightly raised. “Or you could stop being so headstrong and call him first.”

 

“That’s not how it works.” Steve replies, smiling too. “I already sent him the letter and the phone. It’s up to him now.”

 

The Falcon chuckles.

 

“Whatever you say, Cap.”

 

The smile fades. He doesn’t say:

 

_I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me._

 

 

After the Chitauri, after the post-battle Shawarma, every word from Tony’s mouth seemed like an invitation to flirting.  Steve taught him to fight, later on, and their sparring extended to the exchanged phrases, to the light teasing, to the double entendres Tony was so good at. They didn’t jump to bed too fast, however. Steve was still a good boy.

 

After it happened, when his body was yet to part from Tony’s – that position, with the Omega’s thighs wrapped around his waist, practiced so many times in their sparring sessions – the Omega said:

 

“We should keep this informal.”

 

Steve was busy kissing Tony’s neck, his super-soldier stamina already working on another erection. He failed to catch the meaning behind the other Avenger’s words and, looking back, maybe he didn’t want to.

 

“Cap,” Tony insisted, sounding amused, slightly breathless.

 

Steve looked at him.

 

“Informal? What do you mean?”

 

Tony smiled, the smile Steve disliked, the one that made him feel like a child, clueless as to the mating rituals of the 21 century, as inept in them as he was in Tony’s shiny, complex technology.

 

The Omega explained:

 

“No strings attached. I’m not good with relationships.”

 

Steve felt a subtle sting inside, an unexpected unpleasantness, like biting a beautiful fruit and tasting it rotten within. But the arousal was still there, he noted, because this was in the realm of things Tony was good at. Not dates, not kisses in public, but that sinful warmth. That which so many others had sought before Steve, and, really, what he was seeking as well, wasn’t it? It wouldn’t do to hurt. He shouldn’t be surprised.

 

“Yeah.” Steve agreed. “Got it. No strings attached.”

 

 

 

The main reason Steve had done what he did – crushing german policemen in Romania, fighting with a King, alienating the man he loved ( _sometimes my teammates don’t tell me things,_ he had said, once) – currently sleeps, encased not in ice but in a gentler cocoon, peacefully, by his choice, a soft-smiling snow white.

 

Steve would be lying if he said he didn’t feel cheated, at first. Bucky was the preserved past, the last person to link him to a lost reality after Peggy’s death. He thought, perhaps childishly, that Bucky and him would pick up where they left off. _Till the end of the line._ The only brother Steve ever had and—

 

Oh, now that he thinks about it, how it must have looked to Tony. Bucky, an Omega too. Bucky, for whom Steve had lied and fought and ruined. Sure it sounded like romantic love. But it never was, never had been, despite burning just as bright – friendships tend to be overlooked. He was sure Tony would have done the same for Rhodey.

 

Bucky and Sam’s bickering turned sweeter before Bucky went to sleep. Steve saw it: the lingering touches, the charming smiles Sam threw at the former Winter Soldier, the encouragement, the flirting the Omega offered in return. They were courting. Steve wishes Tony could see that. He doubts his word alone can convince him, if they ever meet again.

 

 

He wonders, more often than is healthy, what life would be like if the plane had landed smoothly, if the snow hadn’t been his bed for seventy years. If he hadn’t missed his date.

 

Peggy was not only a woman but an Omega too. Unique in so many ways that Steve was certain, still carrying the memory of her scent, her lipstick frozen on his lips, that she would be the only one.

 

Then Tony came along.

 

But he didn’t make it easy on the Alpha, did he? _No strings attached_. And mixed with his scent sometimes Steve could detect the smell of birth control. He understood it, supported it, rationally. Omegas should decide what to do with their own bodies. But he was much too human not to feel hurt, not to feel bitter, unrooted in this age. What wounds, truly, is that the possibility was never even discussed – that Tony and him could be more than _informal_.

 

 

It`s been nearly a year. The phone he charges daily – out of habit now, more than hope – rings for the first time. Steve barely notices the commotion around him, the threat the cutting-edge radars of Wakanda detected. His hand trembles when he presses the phone against his ear.

 

“Tony?”

 

He hears in response, the words waited for months:

 

_“Come home.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments make me immensely happy. Come talk to me about Steve and Tony being two idiots at sambuckying.tumblr.com


End file.
